Update on Benjamin

He is doing much better!

Benjamin is steadily improving. He is now off of mechanical ventilation. He is on a small amount of oxygen through his nose. He is weaning from IV nutrition onto breast milk through his nasogastric tube (a very fine tube that runs from nose to stomach).

Last night, mom got to hold him for an hour. Today, we got to play with him a little more. He is gassy and cried for the first time (I never thought I would be so excited to hear an infant cry). He has some muscle stiffness, but this should resolve with time.

This is the best we could have hoped for. He does have findings on his MRI consistent with lack of oxygen at birth, and we will be doing everything possible in the coming weeks, months, and years to help him reach his full potential.

What our doctors here at Golisano Children's Hospital (in Fort Myers) have told us many times is that no matter what the data is at birth and in the first few weeks (MRI reports, EEGs, and lab results), there are no strong prognostic factors for outcomes in cases like this.

More on this later... the plot surrounding this issue has thickened considerably for me in the last few days, and I'm excited to share my thoughts about this with you in the future. But I can't say more than that right now.

This is a long way of saying that kids like Ben do make complete recoveries. We were encouraged by the story of a LifeWave team member's son, who had an extremely similar story to ours and is now a perfectly healthy four-year-old. We are so grateful for encouragement like this.

My wife, Michelle, is healing well from Ben's delivery, which was a difficult 17-hour labor. She is an amazing wife and mother and I am so grateful for her.

We have a lot of exciting therapies in the works for Benjamin. I've been calling colleagues and friends in the last few days to get all the best advice and recommendations for his recovery. I will write more about each modality we are planning to use in future posts - stay tuned.

Thank you all for your prayers and best wishes during this time. I finally had time to read the comments on my original post about Ben this morning (over 200!). There were some real tear-jerkers in there. The amount of support you all have given us during this time is incredible, and we are so grateful for all of you.

Thank you all for your support, and God bless,

Dr. and Mrs. Stillman